Aquest llibre reuneix dos temes d'especial interès: el pensament de Thomas Hobbes i el problema de l'objectivitat. Aquest es troba a la rel de la nostra civilització dominada per una ciència que només admet al seu domini els coneixements objectius segons els entenen el positivisme i en cientisme.

Background: There is evidence that household point-of-use water treatment products can reduce the enormous burden of water-borne illness. Nevertheless, adoption among the global poor is very low, and little evidence exists on why. Methods: We gave 600 households in poor communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh randomly-ordered two-month free trials of four water treatment products: dilute liquid chlorine, sodium dichloroisocyanurate tablets, a combined flocculant-disinfectant powdered mixture, and a silver-coated ceramic siphon filter. Consumers also received education on the dangers of untreated drinking water. (...) We measured which products consumers used with self-reports, observation, and chlorine tests. We also measured drinking water's contamination with E. coli. Findings: Households reported highest usage of the filter, although no product had even 30% usage. E. coli concentrations in stored drinking water were generally lowest when households had Water Guard. Households that self-reported product usage had large reductions in E. coli concentrations with any product as compared to controls. Conclusion: Traditional arguments for the low adoption of POU products focus on affordability, consumers' lack of information about germs and the dangers of unsafe water, and specific products not meshing with a household's preferences. In this study we provided free trials, repeated informational messages explaining the dangers of untreated water, and a variety of product designs. The low usage of all products despite such efforts makes clear that important barriers exist beyond cost, information, and variation among these four product designs. Without a better understanding of the choices and aspirations of the target end-users, household-based water treatment is unlikely to reduce morbidity and mortality substantially in urban Bangladesh and similar populations. © 2011 Luoto et al. (shrink)

We show that the variety of n -dimensional weakly higher order cylindric algebras, introduced in Németi [9], [8], is finitely axiomatizable when n > 2. Our result implies that in certain non-well-founded set theories the finitization problem of algebraic logic admits a positive solution; and it shows that this variety is a good candidate for being the cylindric algebra theoretic counterpart of Tarski’s quasi-projective relation algebras.

Analysis of various Buddhist philosophical views.

Study on conduct of life of Muslim women and women in Islamic perspective.

-- 3. Escrits d'economia i finances, 1925 / pròleg de Francesc Roca.

Open peer commentary on the article “What Can the Global Observer Know?” by Diana Gasparyan. Upshot: I introduce some distinctions that I hold to be useful for understanding the global observer problem and then sketch a hypothetical scenario that suggests the existence of an observer that is as good as a global one.

A vigorous discussion of the value problem is under way in our philosophical publications. The problems dealt with have included: whether values exist at all; if so, what they are; what the attitude of Marxist philosophers should be toward them; and whether it is necessary at all to develop a Marxist-Leninist value theory with a distinctive set of concepts. The Symposium on Values held in Tbilisi in 1965 resulted in differing and sometimes opposite viewpoints, which were delineated most clearly. In (...) the past five years, the journals Voprosy filosofii and Filosofskie nauki have published a considerable number of articles discussing the value question ], S. I. Popov, Laszlo Sziklai, D. D. Srednii [translated in Soviet Studies in Philosophy, VIII, 1 ], and V. P. Tugarinov and A. P. Fedosova, in our journal from 1963 to 1968). (shrink)

This paper is a survey of recent results concerning connections between relation algebras , cylindric algebras and polyadic equality algebras . We describe exactly which subsets of the standard axioms for RA are needed for axiomatizing RA over the RA-reducts of CA3's, and we do the same for the class SA of semi-associative relation algebras. We also characterize the class of RA-reducts of PEA3's. We investigate the interconnections between the RA-axioms within CA3 in more detail, and show that only four (...) implications hold between them . In the other direction, we introduce a natural CA-theoretic equation MGR+, generalization of the well-known Merrry-Go-Round equation MGR of CA-theory. We show that MGR+ is equivalent to the RA-reduct being an SA, and that MGR+ implies that the RA-reduct determines the algebra itself, while MGR is not sufficient for either of these to hold. Then we investigate how different CA's a single RRA can 'generate' in the general case. We solve the first part of Problem 11 from the 'Problem Session Paper' of [2].While proving some of the statements, for others we give only outline of proof. The paper contains several open problems. A full version of this paper is under preparation.Keywords: relation algebras, cylindric algebras, polyadic algebras, algebraic logic, arrow logic, proof theory, finite variable fragments, provability with 3 variables, non-finitizability, twisting, non-standard models, neat reducts, representability. (shrink)

Spatial evolutionary game theory explains how cooperative traits can survive the intense competition in biological systems. If the spatial distribution allows cooperators to interact with each other frequently, the benefits of cooperation will outweigh the losses due to exploitation by selfish organisms. However, for a cooperative behavior to get established in a system, it needs to be found initially in a sufficiently large cluster to allow a high frequency of intracooperator interactions. Since mutations are rare events, this poses the question (...) of how cooperation can arise in a biological system in the first place. We present a simple model which captures two concepts from genetics that can explain how evolution overcomes the emergence problem. The first concept is, often in nature, a gene may not express its phenotype except under specific environmental conditions, rendering it to be a “silent” gene. The second key idea is that a neutral gene, one that does not harm or improve an organism’s survival chances, can still spread through a population if it is physically near to another gene that is positively selected. Through these two ideas, our model offers a possible solution to the fundamental problem of emergence of cooperation in biological systems. (shrink)

Abstract.In recent issues of Zygon, numerous reflections have been published commenting on where the field of science‐and‐religion has been, where it presently stands, and where it should move in the future. These reflections touch on the importance of the dialogue and raise questions as to what audience the dialogue addresses and whom it should address. Some scholars see the dialogue as prospering, while others point out that much work needs to be done to make the dialogue more accessible to a (...) larger audience and more successful at tackling the provocative questions before us. Other academics view the questions themselves as needing further consideration and focus before answers to them can even be explored. In this article I provide a general overview of these essays by outlining some general categories of thought that seem to emerge from the contributors. I then present some of my own opinions concerning the future of the science‐religion field and emphasize that the dialogue, in addition to its traditional roles, must further the philosophical framework that can aid humanity in resolving the most pressing global concerns of our time. (shrink)

The theme "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche" is one of the most important for understanding the meaning of the abrupt changes that took place in European philosophy and culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. This epoch is still a puzzle: it was a flourishing period for the creative powers of European humanity and at the same time the beginning of the tragic "breakdown" of history that gave birth to two world wars and unprecedented calamities, the consequences of which Europe has (...) been unable to overcome, as shown by the uninterrupted decline of traditional culture, which began at the end of World War II and still continues today. In this epoch, as in the eighteenth century, which culminated in the Great French Revolution, philosophy came out of the study onto the street and became a practical force that steadily undermines the existing order of things; in a certain sense it was precisely philosophy that called forth the catastrophic events of the first half of the twentieth century, which had as never before a metaphysical subtext. At the center of the upheaval that engulfed absolutely all forms of European civilization and culminated, at the beginning of the twentieth century, with the rise of nonclassical science, "nonclassical" art, and "nonclassical" philosophy, was the problem of man, his essence, the meaning of his existence, and the problem of man's relations with society, the world, and the Absolute. It is no coincidence that M. Scheler used the term "anthropological turn" to describe the changes that occurred in philosophy in this epoch; what had long been implicit in philosophy and art and in paradoxical fashion had become apparent even in the new scientific theories, was now made clear: man is not a tiny "atom" in boundless and alien being, but the starting point for all suppositions, the primary field of meanings from which any philosophical or scientific "questioning" must depart. (shrink)